Practice the Seven Secrets of Sales Success

Excerpted from Brian Tracy's Be A Sales Superstar, published by Berrett-Koehler

There are seven secrets, or principles, of sales success. They are practiced by all the highest paid salespeople every day. The regular application of these principles is virtually guaranteed to move you to the top of your field.

Secret number one: Get serious! Make a decision to go all the way to the top of your field. Make a today decision to join the top 10%. There is no one and nothing that can hold you back from being the best except yourself. Remember, it takes just as long to be great as to be mediocre. The time is going to pass anyway. Your job is to commit to excellence, to get better and better each day, and to never, never stop until you reach the summit.

Secret number two: Identify your limiting skill to sales success. Identify your weakest single skill and make a plan to become absolutely excellent in that area. Ask yourself, and your boss, “What one skill, if I developed and did it consistently in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my sales?” Whatever your answer to this question, write it down, set a deadline, make a plan, and then work on it every day. This decision alone can change your life.

Success secret number three: Get around the right people. Get around positive, successful people. Associate with men and women who are going somewhere with their lives. And get away from negative, critical, complaining people. They drag you down, tire you out, distract and discourage you, and lead you inevitably to underachievement and failure. Remember, you cannot fly with the eagles if you continue to scratch with the turkeys.

Success secret number four: Take excellent care of your physical health. You need high levels of energy to sell effectively, and to bounce back from continual rejection and discouragement. Be sure to eat the right foods, get the right amount of exercise and get plenty of rest and recreation. Make a decision that you are going to live to be 80 years old, or more, and begin today to do whatever you have to do to achieve that goal.

Success secret number five: Visualize yourself as one of the top people in your field. Imagine yourself performing at your best all day long. Feed your subconscious mind with vivid, exciting, emotionalized pictures of yourself as positive, confident, competent and completely in control of every part of your life. These clear mental pictures preprogram you and motivate you to sell at your best in any situation.

Success secret number six: Practice positive self-talk continually. Control your inner dialogue. Talk to yourself the way you want to be rather than the way you might be today.

For example, repeat to yourself these powerful words, over and over again. "I like myself! I'm the best! I can do it! I love my work!"

Say to yourself, “I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!”

Remember, fully 95% of your emotions are determined by the way you talk to yourself, most of the time. The way you feel determines how you behave. And how you behave determines how much you sell.

Your job is to get yourself on an upward spiral where you think and talk to yourself positively, all day long. You think, walk, talk and act like the very best people in your field. When you do, your success becomes inevitable.

Success secret number seven: Take positive action toward your goals, every single day. Be proactive rather than reactive. Grab the bull by the horns. If you are not happy with your income, get out there and get face to face with more customers. If you are not happy with any part of your life, accept responsibility and take charge.

All successful salespeople are intensely action oriented. They have a sense of urgency. They develop a bias for action. They do it now! They have a compulsion to closure. They maintain a fast tempo and move quickly in everything they do.

And the good news is this. The faster you move, the more energy you have. The faster you move, the more ground you cover. The faster you move, the more people you see. The more people you see, the more experience you get. The more experience you get, the more sales you make. The more people you see and the more sales you make, the more your self-esteem and self respect goes up, and the more you will feel like great about yourself. You will have more energy. You will be happier and more positive.

The faster you move, the more you take complete control of your entire life and virtually guarantee that you will be one of the top performers and the highest paid people in your field.

Salespeople are among the most important people in America. Every single company depends for its survival on the success of its salespeople. High sales is the number one reason for company success. Low sales is the number one reason for company failure. And you can be in the driver’s seat.